1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to image display devices and methods for displaying image data, and more particularly to an image display device and method for storing a plurality of image data and selectively displaying the plurality of image data in accordance with the user""s instructions.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image display device of a conventional electronic apparatus which displays, for example, animal characters contains a plurality of displayed images depending on a character to be displayed. The image of any character to be displayed is usually moved or changed by the operation of a plurality of keys of a key-in unit.
In the image display device, the moving of a displayed character is typically performed by a selective operation of up, down, right and left cursor keys.
However, since in the conventional image display device, the respective operations of the up, down, right and left cursor keys and corresponding moves of a character are fixed, the user can interestingly feel as though the displayed character were integral with the user herself, but the user can not feel as though the displayed character were handled as an actual pet.
In view of the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide an image display device and method which is capable of displaying a character which is handled as a more realistic one.
In order to achieve the above the object, according to the present invention, there is provided an image display device comprising: image data storage means which contains a plurality of image data; selection commanding means operated by the user for giving the device a command to select image data to be displayed among from the plurality of image data contained in the image data storage means; selection count storage means for counting and storing the number of times of selection of each of the image data when the command to select and display that image data was given by the selection commanding means; determining means for determining whether the number of times of selection of that image data stored in the selection count storage means is larger than a predetermined value for each of the plurality of image data stored in the image data storage means; and display control means for displaying the image data, the number of times of selection of which is determined by the determining means as being larger than the predetermined value and the command to selection of which is given by the selection commanding means.